Populist Splintering

We live in an era of information overload, and it’s difficult to know whom to trust for thoughtful, rational political content. Locating reliable sources among conservative (and liberal) thinkers and commentators is challenging because the chess pieces keep moving and falling off the board. An additional complication is the cult of personality, which has conservative pundits enriching themselves by acting as content producers. They have sold out their former selves to pursue clicks that demand edgy content.

Let’s unpack this problem and explain what’s going on. We begin with a short list of turncoats.

Tucker Carlson, formerly the most influential host on Fox News. After leaving in 2023, he moved to independent media on X and other platforms. Increasingly critical of Republican foreign policy, corporate power, and parts of the GOP establishment. Often described as “post-conservative” or nationalist but anti-establishment.

Glenn Greenwald, a co-founder of The Intercept who is not originally a conservative, has broken with much of the progressive media establishment, collaborates frequently with conservative audiences, and is a strong critic of U.S. foreign policy, intelligence agencies, and corporate media.

Candace Owens rose to prominence through Turning Point USA and The Daily Wire, split with Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire in 2024 over Israel policy and rhetoric, and now operates independently and often criticizes establishment conservatives.

Steve Bannon, former strategist to Donald Trump and former head of Breitbart News, now promotes a “national populist” movement through his War Room show, and often criticizes the Republican establishment and even parts of Trump’s circle.

Dave Smith, libertarian comedian and host of Part of the Problem, is associated with the Libertarian Party (United States) and a critic of conservatives for foreign intervention, surveillance, and government spending.

These individuals fall into four separate camps: National populists – e.g., Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon; Libertarian critics of the GOP – e.g., Dave Smith; Independent media conservatives – e.g., Candace Owens; and cross-ideological anti-establishment figures – e.g., Glenn Greenwald.

The splitters are now anti-MAGA.

This discussion is about people splitting from Trump. There was also a split that created Trump. If you look at the history, you’ll understand how we got here.

William F. Buckley, by his own willpower, created a conservative ideology in the 1960s. Prior to that time, conservatism was seen as nothing more than honoring traditions and resisting change. Buckley welded together three disparate groups: traditional conservatives, libertarians, and former communists, who had rejected the failed Soviet Union. That alliance got Reagan elected in 1980. The new conservative alliance included Irving Kristol, the so-called founder of Neoconservatism. Neocons believe in an interventionist foreign policy, including forcing regime change if necessary.

By the end of Reagan’s second term, some conservatives, most notably Pat Buchanan, were predicting an ideological split. Buchanan, himself, was one of the founders of Paleoconservatism, which is basically the Buckley ideology without the Neocons. Buchanan accused the Republican Party of becoming too globalist, pro-immigration, and interventionist. He promoted economic nationalism, immigration restriction, and non-intervention abroad. Trump later embraced these ideas.

Irving Kristol, for his part, predicted there would be growing tensions between economic libertarianism (small government and individual liberty) and social conservatism (moral order and cultural stability) within the right. The split is:

Establishment Right - global markets, immigration friendly, interventionist foreign policy, and Elite institutions.

Populist / National Right - economic nationalism, immigration restriction, non-intervention, and America First anti-elite populism.

The fusionist coalition that Buckley created lasted until 2015. At that point, the legacy of a single event broke it. That event was the Iraq War. The end of the Cold War in 1990 removed a uniting factor among the conservatives, but the Iraq War caused the final break. The break came when several political ideas became reality: trust in conservative foreign-policy elites collapsed, populist conservatives began attacking the “neoconservative establishment,” and libertarians and nationalists began cooperating politically.

This shift created the intellectual groundwork for populist momentum.

Many conservative intellectuals realized the break was permanent on February 13, 2016, at the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, when Donald Trump directly attacked the legacy of George W. Bush over the Iraq War, while standing next to Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush. During the debate, Trump said, “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake.” He went further and blamed the Bush administration for destabilizing the Middle East, saying the war had made the region worse rather than better.

This comment cemented in place the difference between the conservative establishment and MAGA, leading to outrage among the Republican establishment over Trump. This outrage birthed the resistance to Trump in his first term, including The Lincoln Project, and the Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney.

Fast-forward to the present day, and we now see a fragmentation in the populist coalition. Tucker Carlson has become an anti-establishment nationalist. He heavily criticizes Israel and accuses Trump of being Netanyahu’s stooge. Carlson opposes Trump’s foreign policy because it draws our attention away from the country. His “cult of personality” behavior is evidenced by his ridicule of Ted Cruz during an interview and his embrace of Nick Fuentes, who is an antisemite and an admirer of Hitler.

There is no explanation for Candace Owens, who went from Democrat to conservative to conspiracy theorist. Some recent titles from her podcast include JD Vance’s Mysterious Past, Elon Musk, Secret Underground Bases, and UFOs, Shocking: The Sinister Group Behind Your Grocery Items, and How We Faked the Moon Landing. Most recently, she has been attacking Erika Kirk. She reveals what she calls Erika’s “shady past” and says Erika might be a psychopath.

When I notice a behavior change in those I listen to for content, a shift from politics to the weird and unusual, that ends it for me. The correlation between controversy and clicks is used to foster the cult of personality, rendering their discussions useless.

The populist fragmentation we’ve been discussing is damaging to the conservative movement, and the behavior mimics what the Democrats do. They’re better at dealing with it, however, because they have to live with it all the time.

The conservative movement is breaking down into competing identities, each vying for airtime. The lack of unity and obsession with ideology bodes ill for this November’s election, and the left is giddy at its prospects. Building unity out of the ideological splinters of our populist movement is like herding cats when the cats only care about themselves.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.